ARAMAIC WORD STUDY – THE WEDDING DANCE – CHADOTHA חדותא Cheth Daleth Vav Taw Aleph
Thanks for Nothing Charles Darwin
Psalms 19:9 “The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.”
I read a story in “Voice of the Martyrs” magazine about a pastor in Uzbekistan who was preaching from Hebrews 10:34. Nobody was listening to his sermon. Nobody was listening because no one was in his church, his congregation was too afraid of being arrested to attend church. But this pastor was called to preach so he preached to a congregation of one, himself.
If God has called you to preach or teach, it doesn’t matter if you have a congregation or classroom, you will preach or teach just for the joy of proclaiming the Word of God in some overt way. I suppose that if no one read my blog or my little studies, I guess I would still write these studies out just for the joy of writing them and to fulfill what I believe is God’s call upon my life.
The “fear of the Lord” is a topic I have tackled on a number of occasions and I suppose if you look back on my studies going back fourteen years you may find I have grown in my understanding of what it means to fear the Lord.
I still believe the word “fear” is an unfortunate rendering. The word “fear” in English has gone through an evolutionary process in the last 500 years. Speaking of evolution, it was Charles Darwin who helped establish our modern definition of the word “fear” in his book: “The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals” in the early 1800s. It was about this time that the definition of “fear” in English narrowed to mean “an emotional response to a perceived threat.” Thanks to Darwin we Christians not only have to contend with the science of evolution we also have to face the 19th century and now into the 21st Century Christians viewed the “fear of the Lord” as God being a threat to us. I can’t help but believe that old Charlie damaged Christianity more with definitions than with his theories.
Would you like Chaim Bentorah as your personal Hebrew teacher?
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The Old English word for fear is fryhto which means an awe-inspiring event. By the time of the King James Version, the word fear was a combination of an awe inspiriting event and a terrifying event. As the church depended very heavily on fear to keep its members in line, translators found the English word fear to be quite an adequate translation for the Hebrew word yarah and thus it is has entered into our vocabulary that fear is an emotional response to a danger or perceived threat and thus to fear the Lord means to see God as a danger or threat ie., the judge who can condemn us to eternity in Hell. Actually, that type of fear in Hebrew is the word paqad, which is a fear for your own gizzard.
Fortunately, many modern translations are dropping this English word fear in favor of the word honor or respect which is more in line with the Hebrew word yarah. Still, we can not adequately translate the word yarah into English with just one English word.
Take a look at the root word in the Hebrew for fear. It is yara spelled Yod, Resh,” Aleph. The Yod is actually the word for hand and represents the complete power of God. It was believed in ancient times that the heart rested in the palm of your hand. The hand is the one part of your body that you view the most. In ancient Assyria, a Mother would have the name of their sons tattooed on the palm of their hand before the son went off to war so that the Mother could continually be reminded of her son.
In its Semitic form to “fear the Lord” was to take the hand of God. That is to fear the Lord is to accept His power, His love, and His heart. The next letter is a Resh which represents the head, the leadership, or authority. To fear the Lord means to accept God’s leadership, headship, and authority in our lives. The last letter is the Aleph which represents unity, and oneness with God.
From this little exercise, we could conclude that to fear (yara) the Lord means to accept His power, love, and heart. To allow his hand to rest upon us and submit ourselves to his authority and become one with Him. Now if we are to look for one English word to fit yara, I think our English word honor, respect and/or reverence would be a much better match than our 21st Century use of the English word fear.
Oh, by the way, Psalms 19:9 tells us that the fear of the Lord is clean. That’s cool, whatever that is supposed to mean. The word clean is tahar which means purifying. Receiving the hand of God, his leadership and authority and unity with Him is a purifying action, that is it will purify our motives which will, oddly, enough mean that we will honor, respect, and reverence Him out of love and not fear. That is fear in the sense of Darwin’s definition.
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Thanks & Blessings, it means a lot to me!
Thank you Chaim for furthering the insight of my experience with Father. I do walk in Reverence of/in Father and have looked at it like that but I very much liked a fuller picture/understanding. I ask Father for understanding, direct from Him and He gives it, but today He has completed it through you. praise Father (Hashem). Re the fear bit that is demonic! and sadly so many walk in it and don’t know to repent and ask for deliverance! I understand that the masons wrote the kings james version, is that when the lost books of the Bible happened? Hebrew of the original is what I am after that corrects wrong understandings of both Old and New Testaments. and Thank you Holy Spirit whom reveals truth. Thanks again Chaim; The lord bless you. I assume that as Hebrew, that you have access to Father through Abraham’s Covenant with Father????
Thank you so much dear friend of God and protector of His heart. I cannot express fully in words how much your teaching, and the sharing of your studies of the Hebrew meaning of God’s word has blessed me and continues to bless me. The scripture from Psalm 119 comes to mind; “The unfolding of your word, brings light.” Hallelujah! Thank you for gently unfolding God’s word to us. I feel His love through your teachings via emails and also through your book ‘Hebrew Word Study,. . revealing the heart of God’ . . So needed. Thank you, thank you. Please keep it going. God bless you and keep you always close to His heart. Joy
Thank you so much.im just tired for now.
I often wonder how God feels about His letter to His children being so misinterpreted, and thus His love misunderstood. It must break His heart.
Thank you for your devotion, C.B., to guiding your readers to a better understanding of the meaning of God’s Word. I imagine God appreciating your service very much.
Truely a blessings for me and my family here back in India. It is really wonderful to study and gain the knowledge of the ancient and the root language. I am so blessed that I consider your word as a daily manna for each one of us. Thankyou so much for your efforts and and the hardship you are doing …each day it is a new revelation for me to study and I am surprised that each day God is talking to me to make me understand the His word through your informations…May The Lord Bless you in the mighty name of Jesus….Keep it up….God Bless
Your studies are truly a Blessing!
Thanks so much for sharing!
I often get a revelation, but have no one to share it with, especially because each of us has our own Unique walk with God. Keep up the great work!
May The Lord Bless you in Abundance and keep you safe and well, in the Precious Name of Yeshua, Amein v Amein
A great word. I was at the Keswick Convention back in 1988 and recall a sermon about fear, and the preacher claiming fear was a good thing. I saw him 2 hrs later talking to his wife, and he seemed in turmoil.
His sermon was hard, because his fear was the terror sort, not reverence, he instinctively knew something was wrong.
I did too, straight away, struggling with different issues and needing a God who’s into yada, not terror.
So it’s a beautiful liberating point, distinction. Thanks Chaim.
I love, love, love this. Since I was a little girl, I have always felt the love and protection of God. I’ve never had the “terrifying fear” that man speaks about. He has always been loving to me even when I didn’t really know anything about Him. Now that I know Him, I know what a loving God He truly is and how much He loves us. Why would anyone want to paint Him as a terrifying God?
I appreciate you sharing this wonderful Word of truth!
Thank you teacher.
This explanation fits so much better with the command to love our heavenly Father!
You keep driving out the dark areas that is difficult to explain.
That was BRILLIANT!!!
My interpretation of ‘fearing the Lord’, which I have preached for years, has to do with ‘respect’ and ‘love’ in the sense, that I have always said, that you would not be ‘afraid’ to ask your parents for help, so you should NOT be ‘afraid’ to ask heavenly father for anything. – But you would be ‘afraid’ to do something to displease or offend your parents or a good friend (i.e. out of love and respect).
I am so glad you wrote this article, it proves, that when I prayed for understanding about the use of the word in this context, that the reply I got was correct.
It is like with the word ‘offend’ used in the New Testament, i.e. if thy right eye ‘offend’ thee, pluck it out. What the word ‘offend’ there means, in the context: “if thy right eye ’causes thee to trip up (i.e. sin)’ pluck it out.” Put differently, ‘eradicate’ that in your life that causes you to sin. Or as you were teaching, “Take the hand of the LORD (or take his name upon yourself (i.e. follow HIM)) and ‘allow’ him to purify your heart (convert you to choose the right)”. – Thank you, Helgi
Wow, I just went through a dozen passages citing the “fear of the Lord”, “fear the Lord,” etc., and when I replaced fear with HONOR, oh, what a holy, precious difference it made for me! I was deeply touched!
Thanks so much, Chaim, for digging this out for us!
Excellent on the fear of the Lord.
Loved this thank you ☺️